VOLUME 122
MARCH 2009
NUMBER 5
© 2009 by The Harvard Law Review Association
IN MEMORIAM: OLIVER OLDMAN
The editors of the Harvard Law Review respectfully dedicate this
issue to Professor Oliver Oldman.
William P. Alford∗
Ollie Oldman may have had the most cluttered, paper-filled office
in the modern history of the Harvard Law School. To be sure, there
has been much competition for this title. Paul Freund was legendary
not only for his brilliance in constitutional law but also for turning his
office into a fire marshal’s nightmare. Charlie Donahue has shown his
mettle, and vast learning across law and history, with an office so full
that daylight long since ceased to enter. And there was a brief period
when the late Jim Vorenberg, in his best decanal manner, suggested
that I might find better ways to emulate such esteemed senior colleagues than to engage them in a paper race.
But worthy though the competition from Professors Freund, Donahue, and others may have been, there was something quite singular
about Ollie’s office. Perhaps it is not surprising that a scholar of constitutional law, immersed in a document that grows in far from predictable ways, might reside in an office whose order seemed hard to
ascertain. Or that an expert in medieval legal history, immersed in
contending claims of church and state, and a range of languages and
cultures, would find it artificial to presume that everything might come
together in a single coherent whole. Who, though, would expect a
scholar of tax and of public finance to be anything but highly ordered
and given to a strict taxonomy — for, surely, these are fields in which
precision matters, in which capturing a zeitgeist will not do.
A 2006 study by social scientists from Columbia and the University
of Texas describes the state of an individual’s office as “behavioral
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
∗ Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law and Vice Dean for the Graduate Program and International Legal Studies, Harvard Law School.
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[Vol. 122:1285
residue” indicating one’s “cognitive inclination.”1 If that is true, Ollie’s
office was a treasure trove, illuminating key elements of what made
this gentle man so extraordinary.
Perhaps most importantly, Ollie’s office indicated a wondrous ability to think outside the box or, for that matter, any other organizational
device. Where others saw only chaos, Ollie discerned novel patterns
and much promise. So it was that decades ago, well before the formation of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, Ollie
not only foresaw the need and opportunity for a regional organization
across the Pacific but also appreciated that it would take a form different from its counterpart in Europe. And hence was born the first
course on what Ollie called the Pacific Legal Community to be offered
at any North American law school. With it came a program by that
name that was to expand the horizons of hundreds of law students not
only about that region but also about the possibilities for institutional
innovation more generally. In so doing, the program produced some of
the first legally oriented scholarship here (and abroad) on this now increasingly obvious and important subject. I am told that, in much the
same vein, Ollie rethought many central questions in his principal field
of public finance, but I leave that subject for others more knowledgeable than I to explicate.
Ollie’s creativity went beyond ideas to people and was evident in
the way in which he drew talent to the Law School, there marshalling
it to great effect. It was Ollie who had the inspiration to reach beyond
traditional academe circles and invite the eminent Tokyo practitioner
Yukio Yanagida, a 1966 L.L.M. graduate of Harvard Law School, to
put together a course on foreign investment that proved so popular
and successful that it led to the development of a highly innovative
casebook on that topic by Mr. Yanagida and four other Harvard Law
School graduates.2 Similarly, it was Ollie, never missing a beat, who
stepped forward to provide inspired leadership for the Law School’s
East Asian Legal Studies Program and International Tax Program
when their well-regarded leaders, Jerome Cohen and Stanley Surrey,
respectively, moved on to other endeavors. And he did so, being both
bold and gracious, taking these programs in important new directions
both at Harvard and beyond in terms of their scholarly profile and
public policy imprint, but throughout deflecting credit to his predeces–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
1 The study was conducted by Sam Gosling and Dana Carney and is discussed in Jordan
Lite, Political Science: What Being Neat or Messy Says About Political Leanings,
SCIENTIFICAMERICAN.COM, Oct. 13, 2008, http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=organizationand-political-leanings.
2 YUKIO YANAGIDA, DANIEL H. FOOTE, EDWARD STOKES JOHNSON, JR., J. MARK
RAMSEYER & HUGH T. SCOGIN, JR., LAW AND INVESTMENT IN JAPAN: CASES AND
MATERIALS (2d ed. 2000).
2009]
OLIVER OLDMAN
1287
sors and to the talented personnel he was able to attract to these programs. Later, Ollie was enormously supportive of his successors (including myself in East Asian Legal Studies), again without taking
credit for his immense contributions and ongoing astute advice.3
As the foregoing suggests, Ollie was a genuinely modest man, notwithstanding a life of great accomplishment — and that, too, was
borne out by his office. Others might well have been tempted to flaunt
the major awards that Ollie won, including the Order of the Rising
Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon from the Japanese government
(tantamount to knighthood), the Daniel M. Holland Medal from the
National Tax Association,4 an endowed full tuition scholarship in his
name at Duke for aspiring experts in international tax,5 and much
more. But, although Ollie took justifiable pride in these accomplishments, evidence of them was, let us say, hard to locate in his office.
If Ollie’s office succeeded in cloaking patterns of organization,
prizes, and copies of his own many publications (several translated into
various languages), it also offered a window on his warmth. This began, literally, with the intricate glass window crafted by his daughter
Meg that Ollie had installed on the door to the office, which gave him
the opportunity to tell visitors about his three children. It also included the enormous goodwill emanating from him and reciprocated
by legions of students, younger scholars, and others he assisted, both
substantively and on a more personal level. Stories abound of Ollie
taking newcomers to the school, especially from overseas, under his
wing, urging them upon meeting to call him by his first name. This
was a constant throughout a distinguished career that commenced on
the Harvard faculty in 1955 and, in theory, terminated with his taking
emeritus status in 1993, but in fact continued, through seminars, reading groups, and less formal personal interaction in which he freely
shared his learning and wisdom, until 2007 — which is part of what
accounts for the outpouring of remembrances now from throughout
the world. And so, although Ollie is no longer with us, his sagacity,
warmth, and generosity of spirit continue to shine through in comforting ways that even the seeming clutter of that legendary office could
not obscure.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
3 For more on Professor’s Oldman’s role in the International Tax Program, see the other
pieces in this memorial section.
4 For a list of Holland Medal winners, see The Daniel M. Holland Medal,
http://www.ntanet.org/awards/daniel_m_holland_medal.htm (last visited Feb. 8, 2009).
5 DUKE CTR. FOR INT’L DEV., DUKE UNIV., THE OLIVER OLDMAN SCHOLARSHIP FOR
STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL TAXATION 1 (2008), http://www.pubpol.duke.edu/centers/dcid/
documents/oldman_scholarship.pdf.
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Richard M. Bird∗
One cold, rainy spring day in 1961, when I returned home from a
day of working at the London School of Economics to complete my
Columbia Ph.D. thesis, I was astonished to find a telegram — yes, it
was that long ago — asking if I might be interested in an appointment
at Harvard starting on July 1. My appointment was to be a joint one,
half in the Department of Economics and half at the Law School
(where I may have been the only new appointment who had never
even visited a law school). Not being an idiot, I accepted the appointment and arrived in Cambridge that June. I was housed, as I recall, in a small office (formerly the pantry) off the kitchen of Kendall
House, then the home of the International Tax Program (ITP), of
which at that point I had never heard.
The ITP had been created a few years earlier by Stanley Surrey.
Soon after I arrived, however, Surrey went off to Washington as Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy. As far as I was concerned, Ollie Oldman
was thus the ITP: he greeted me, showed me the ropes, and soon became, as he remained for the next forty-seven years, a key fixed point
in my professional life. Indeed, since Ollie had been instrumental in
my last-minute appointment to fill an unexpected opening, in an important sense he was largely responsible for shaping that life, which
has been spent largely working on taxation and development issues.
On a personal level, both Ollie and his wife, Barbara, soon made
my wife Marcia and me feel most welcome in what was to us a totally
new environment, and we all became good friends. Of course, we
were hardly unique in this respect: Ollie and Barbara were famous
hosts and perhaps the nicest, most helpful couple that any newcomer
to Harvard could possibly meet. Indeed, for decades they were first
hosts and then friends to every new crop of ITP students. The standard of personal and professional commitment and care the Oldmans
set with respect to both ITP staff and students established a model
that few, if any, international teaching programs have ever managed to
achieve, let alone to sustain for decades.
Ollie was well grounded in economics, which he had taught at Buffalo for some years. More importantly, he had a deep understanding of
the essentially interdisciplinary nature of the subjects covered by the
ITP curriculum. My designated task was to teach ITP students “eco–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
∗
Professor Emeritus of Economics, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.
2009]
OLIVER OLDMAN
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nomics for tax officials” and “public finance in developing countries.”
While he left me to do it my own way, he was always there to provide
counsel and advice on topics, readings, and how best to reach this diverse group of students with very different personal and professional
backgrounds. Moreover, he encouraged and facilitated research in the
area, for example, by working with me in preparing the first book of
readings on taxation and development to be published.1 Ollie was also
instrumental in supporting and assisting me in broadening my realworld experience, first by sending me to Mexico for a summer to work
on a project2 and then, when I accepted an appointment with what
was at that time the Harvard Development Advisory Service in Colombia, by providing both much-needed moral support and helpful
professional guidance during my two years in Bogotá. When I returned to the ITP in the late 1960s, Richard Musgrave had joined the
Law School faculty, with the result that for the next few years I had
the great pleasure of working with and learning from both Ollie and
Richard, as well as such ITP colleagues as Martin Norr and George
Eder. By the time I returned to Canada in 1968, my education, both
analytical and practical, in the virtues and limitations of a comparative and international perspective of taxation and tax policy was well
advanced.
Subsequently, I continued to work with Ollie, abroad — in Mexico
and Egypt, for instance — as well as in writing. Over the years, in
addition to the books already mentioned, we wrote several articles together on a variety of subjects — income taxes in Mexico, tax reform
in Latin America, and administrative reform in Singapore. Ollie was
never a particularly productive scholar in the conventional sense. In a
deeper sense, however, his contribution to tax scholarship was considerably greater than is generally appreciated. Recently, for example, I
was publicly commended for the contribution I had allegedly made to
public finance scholarship by focusing on the administrative aspects of
taxation in developing countries as a critical issue. Of course I learned
this from Ollie, who, more than anyone I have known, was always
concerned not so much with what should be done in some ideal world,
but rather with the critical questions of precisely what could be done
and how it could best be done in any particular real-world situation.
This lesson has still to be learned by many who freely proffer useless
advice to people with real problems.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
1 READINGS ON TAXATION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES (Richard M. Bird & Oliver
Oldman eds., 1964). Later editions of this book were published in 1967, 1975, and 1990.
2 The book finally produced by this project, OLIVER OLDMAN, HENRY J. AARON,
RICHARD M. BIRD & STEPHEN L. KASS, FINANCING URBAN DEVELOPMENT IN MEXICO
CITY (1967), was perhaps the first systematic (if not wholly successful) look at how tax law interacts with urban form and development.
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Apart from his extensive teaching and published work on state and
local taxation, particularly the property tax, three examples of Ollie‘s
contributions to serious scholarly works come to mind. First, his pioneering analysis of penalty structures in an important 1961 paper deserves to be more widely known.3 Recently, for example, an internal
audit report on the administration of the Canadian Goods and Services
Tax correctly noted that the penalty structure was not well designed
and hindered effective administration, essentially because it did not
adequately penalize taxpayers for failing to provide required information that was needed to enforce taxes on others.4 No one who had
read Oldman’s paper would have made this design mistake. Oldman’s
1975 book with Michael McIntyre is equally prescient in its emphasis
on the need for an adequate institutional framework for tax policy development and implementation.5
Second, if Carl Shoup (my thesis supervisor) may properly be called
the “grandfather” of the value-added taxation (VAT) discussion in
North America, then Ollie was surely the “father.” Indeed, I suspect
(although I cannot verify) that his seminar on VAT at Harvard was the
first academic course on the subject on the continent. Certainly, his
influential work with Alan Schenk has done much to call this tax to
the attention of the American tax profession.6
Finally, Ollie encouraged and facilitated the research activities of
the ITP. These ranged from numerous studies of international taxation — many tax treaties around the world have been negotiated in
part or whole by ITP graduates, sometimes on both sides of the table
— to major comparative studies (the World Tax Series, the tax technique handbooks) and a considerable body of work on taxation and
development ranging from studies of tax incentives and agricultural
taxation to reports on tax (and local finance) reform in countries such
as Colombia and Bolivia.
Ollie Oldman’s main contribution to the tax world, however, was
undoubtedly his role in developing and nurturing the ITP. Over the
fifty or so years of its existence, the ITP brought hundreds of people
from around the world to Cambridge for a year’s intensive work on
taxation law, economics, and administration. Most were government
officials, but some were private practitioners and a few were policy re–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
3 Oliver Oldman, Controlling Income Tax Evasion, in JOINT TAX PROGRAM, PROBLEMS
OF TAX ADMINISTRATION IN LATIN AMERICA 296 (1965).
4 CAN. REVENUE AGENCY, GST/HST REGULATORY COMPLIANCE EVALUATION
STUDY NON-REGISTRATION (2008), http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/gncy/ntrnl/2008/rgst-cmp-vl-
eng.html.
5 MICHAEL J. MCINTYRE & OLIVER OLDMAN, INSTITUTIONALIZING THE PROCESS OF
TAX REFORM: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS (1975).
6 See ALAN SCHENK & OLIVER OLDMAN, VALUE ADDED TAX: A COMPARATIVE
APPROACH (2007).
2009]
OLIVER OLDMAN
1291
searchers and scholars. Ollie recruited them, nurtured them — both
individually and in the sense of developing an esprit de corps — in
some instances shepherded them into further education, at the Law
School or elsewhere, or into employment with one of the international
agencies, and kept in touch with many of them. Over the last forty or
so years, almost wherever I have gone in the world, at some point
someone told me how fondly they remember their time at the ITP and
especially Ollie. Similarly, whenever I visited Ollie’s office, he always
seemed able to find, somewhere in the pile of paper with which he was
surrounded, a recent item dealing with whatever country I was working on and was often able to direct me to someone in that country who
could help answer my question.
The ITP was perhaps the largest and most sustained of Harvard
Law School’s international outreach efforts. On the whole, the rewards from the investment in the ITP clearly repaid the effort. Anyone actively involved in the world of international and comparative
tax policy during the last forty years has been affected, sometimes to
an extent and in ways they may not know, by ITP’s research output as
well as by its graduates, whether found in finance departments, national tax offices, the Fiscal Affairs Department of the International
Monetary Fund, or some position less obviously related to taxation
(such as Prime Minister). Since the demise of the ITP at the Law
School, the torch has, to a limited extent, been picked up elsewhere. It
seems unlikely, however, that any of these (partial) successors will ever
burn quite as brightly or cast quite as much light on the dark, mysterious interstices between tax law and tax reality as did the International
Tax Program in its heyday at the Law School. The ITP is much
missed. Even more so, however, is its guiding hand and spirit, Oliver
Oldman.
Michael J. McIntyre∗
Professor Oliver Oldman was an unpretentious man, known to his
friends and even distant acquaintances as “Ollie.” For most of his career at Harvard Law School, he served as the director of the International Tax Program (ITP), where I worked under him from 1971 to
1975. Ollie succeeded another Harvard legend, Stanley S. Surrey,
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
∗ Professor of Law, Wayne State University Law School. The author previously published a
tribute to Professor Oldman from which some portions of this piece are drawn. See Michael J.
McIntyre, Oliver Oldman, a Remembrance, 52 TAX NOTES INT'L 841 (2008) (also appearing in
50 ST. TAX NOTES 706 (2008) and 121 TAX NOTES 1320 (2008)).
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[Vol. 122:1285
when Surrey left Harvard to become Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy
in the Kennedy/Johnson Administration. As ITP director, Ollie promoted a program that trained future tax officials from developing
countries in law, public finance, and accountancy at a time when interdisciplinary studies were in their infancy. The ITP probably has influenced tax policy around the world on a scale unmatched by any
other educational program.
Ollie generally specialized in areas of tax law that were important
internationally but which had not received the attention they deserved
from other U.S. academics. One such area was the property tax.
Ollie’s interests extended, however, to all types of taxes that might be
implemented successfully at the subnational level. He was the first
academic to make the study of state and local taxation the subject of
serious scholarship, and he taught one of the earliest law school
courses on that subject. He was involved throughout his career in tax
reform projects in developing countries that focused on taxation by local and regional governments. He also was a leading U.S. authority on
the value-added tax — a tax that is of immense importance in countries other than the United States. During his emeritus years, he coauthored a book on the value-added tax with my Wayne State colleague, Alan Schenk.
One area of federal income tax that did attract Ollie’s interest was
the taxation of the family. He coauthored an influential paper on that
topic that appeared in the Stanford Law Review in 1960.1 Later he
collaborated with me on a paper that explored the relationship of
marital income-attribution rules and the Haig-Simons definition of income.2 Ollie and I also shared a strong interest in the use of combined
reporting with formulary apportionment for taxing the income of
members of a group of closely related corporations. Ollie had addressed that issue in his writings out of his interest in California’s apportionment system.3 Ollie was keenly interested, nevertheless, in my
work on the extension of that system to the international level.
My first contact with Ollie came when I requested special permission to take his seminar on Tax Reform in Developing Countries.
That was in 1967, when I was a first-year student at Harvard Law
School. I had been awarded a scholarship designed for students interested in a career focusing on economic development in developing
countries. To get the award renewed for my second year of law school,
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
1 Oliver Oldman & Ralph Temple, Comparative Analysis of the Taxation of Married Persons,
12 STAN. L. REV. 585 (1960).
2 Michael J. McIntyre & Oliver Oldman, Taxation of the Family in a Comprehensive and
Simplified Income Tax, 90 HARV. L. REV. 1573 (1977).
3 Oliver Oldman & Jennifer J.S. Brooks, The Unitary Method and the Less Developed Countries: Preliminary Thoughts, 1 INT’L BUS. L.J. 45 (1987) (Fr.).
2009]
OLIVER OLDMAN
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I needed to show that I was actually pursuing studies appropriate for
such a career. I had few choices — the only option other than Ollie’s
seminar was a seminar on Land-Use Planning in Developing Countries. At the time, all Harvard Law School seminars were reserved for
third-year students. The land-use professor turned me down when I
requested a waiver of that rule, but Ollie welcomed me into his seminar with enthusiasm.
I like to remember Ollie as the classical cockeyed optimist. Despite
his strong practical grounding and his keen understanding of the mainsprings of human conduct, he was always looking for the positive opportunities that Dame Fortune may have presented. Ollie’s mix of surprising optimism and practical sense got me my first job in taxation. I
came to see Ollie during my second year at law school and indicated
that I would like to find a summer job in the public sector dealing
with international tax. Ollie rummaged about his cluttered desk and
came up with a job posting from the U.S. Treasury Department. It
was for a summer job that would have me traveling around the country interviewing the export managers of U.S. companies. Treasury
wanted to know the legal forms being used for exporting in order to
know what issues were likely to be important in its tax-treaty
negotiations.
I told Ollie the job sounded great, except that I did not have a law
degree, did not have a Ph.D. in economics, and did not have extensive
business experience — all listed as requirements for the position. Ollie
smiled and suggested that no applicants for the position would have
those qualifications and that few people would even apply because of
those apparent requirements. He suggested I apply, but he warned me
I probably would not hear from Treasury until July, when the officials
there got discouraged about getting anyone they thought was qualified.
I got the call over the Fourth of July weekend, and I started the job
immediately.
Over his long academic career, Ollie worked closely with some of
the leading tax figures of his day. He did tax reform projects with
Richard Musgrave,4 wrote on tax reform in developing countries with
Richard Bird,5 and co-taught and wrote on state and local taxes with
Richard Pomp.6 He gave substance to one of Stanley Surrey’s dreams
by promoting the World Tax Series volumes on national tax systems.
The volume on France, coauthored by Martin Norr, Ollie’s longtime
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
4 See, e.g., COLOM. COMM’N ON TAX REFORM, FISCAL REFORM FOR COLOMBIA (Malcolm Gillis ed., 1971) (listing Ollie as a member of the team of which Musgrave was president and
including a forward by Ollie at ix–x).
5 TAXATION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES (Richard M. Bird & Oliver Oldman eds., 4th
ed. 1990).
6 RICHARD D. POMP & OLIVER OLDMAN, STATE & LOCAL TAXATION (5th ed. 2005).
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[Vol. 122:1285
associate, won high honors from the French government.7 He also
contributed greatly to the tax literature with his reviews of other people’s articles and projects. He was astonishingly well read in his many
fields and possessed a “common sense” that was refined and wellgrounded in practical experience. Everyone in his wide circle who was
working on a tax project wanted Ollie’s opinion on their efforts.
Few people in the tax world were as well-connected as Ollie. He
seemed to know everyone. A well-traveled friend of mine claims that
he could visit almost any developing country in the world and have
someone ask about Ollie. I’ve been to conferences with Ollie at which
Ollie introduced me to dozens of people I knew only by reputation.
We attended together a memorial service for Carl Shoup, in a small
town in New Hampshire, and I think Ollie knew almost everyone in
attendance, including many of the members of the large contingent
from Japan.
One of my most enjoyable collaborations with Ollie was our work
together at Tax Notes International (TNI), one of the publications from
Tax Analysts, the public interest publishing house founded by Tom
Field. I was the founding editor of TNI, and Ollie was chairman of its
advisory board. We worked closely together to create a publication
that gave reliable news about tax developments around the world
while maintaining a public policy focus.
Ollie spent a good part of his summers at his place in Blodgett
Landing, New Hampshire, located on a hill overlooking Lake
Sunapee. When we were working together on TNI, I would visit Ollie
to plot strategy, with my family in tow. He was full of sound advice,
and he always sought to temper my more confrontational impulses.
He also took my boys sailing on the lake. A special treat for my boys
was taking a ride on Ollie’s magnificent swing, which was suspended
from high up the trunks of a pair of majestic northern pines located on
the hill overlooking the lake. Just one little push and the boys sailed
excitedly out into the wide blue yonder.
Tax specialists from all over the world made the pilgrimage to
Blodgett Landing. Ollie and Barbara were magnificent hosts, and
Ollie liked nothing better than talking shop with other tax experts at
his lakeside retreat. The swimming was good, and, if you did not
know how to swim, Ollie would be glad to give you lessons. One of
Ollie’s proudest achievements was teaching his grandson, Robin, to
swim.
Ollie was exceptionally popular with the participants in the ITP,
and for good reason. He was probably the most pleasant, down-toearth person ever to hold a tenured position at Harvard Law School.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
7
MARTIN NORR & PIERRE KERLAN, TAXATION IN FRANCE (1966).
2009]
OLIVER OLDMAN
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Let me recite a story to make my point. I have related this story elsewhere, but it says too much about Ollie not to repeat it.
One of the participants in the ITP and his wife had invited the
Oldmans and myself to their apartment for dinner. At the appointed
time, I drove to the general vicinity of their street, only to find that the
road was impassable, covered with a foot and a half of water. The
prior two days had seen torrential rains, and the Cambridge storm
drains were not up to the challenge. I drove around the area looking
for a safe passage and found only deeper water. So, I beat a hasty retreat and found a phone, with the intent of offering my regrets. To my
utter astonishment, Ollie answered the phone. Here was the exchange,
burned into my memory:
Me: “Ollie! [Pause.] How did you get there? The place is surrounded by
a lake of water.”
Ollie: “Barbara and I just took off our shoes and socks, she hiked up her
dress, and I rolled up my pants, and we waded in.”
Me: [Long pause.] “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Oliver Oldman loved nothing more than playing the role of the
matchmaker in bringing together people of his acquaintance for collaborative work on a tax project. If you called Ollie about a tax issue,
you were very likely to be told of several other people working on that
issue, or an issue that might be relevant to it. In many ways, he was
the glue that held together that fragile confederation of tax reformers
concerned about the fate of developing countries.
Through his writings, his many, many collaborations, and perhaps
most of all, through his students at the ITP, Ollie became one of the
most influential tax professors in the long history of Harvard Law
School. I am honored to have the opportunity here to celebrate his
wonderful life.
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Minoru Nakazato∗ and J. Mark Ramseyer∗∗
We leave our mark on the world through which we pass, and we
leave it each in our own particular way. Professor Oliver Oldman left
his mark in the memories of the men and women he welcomed from
abroad. He left it in the memories of the international students he
taught. He left it in those of the officials and scholars he mentored.
And he left it in those of the bewildered but grateful families of the
students, officials, and scholars to whom he and Barbara played host,
parent, and grandparent.
Mentor, coach, den leader — those were the roles that Ollie Oldman instinctively understood and undertook. From the sublime to the
quotidian, he recognized both how badly foreign students and scholars
wanted to study in Cambridge, and how disconcerting a place as
anomic, competitive, and unforgiving as Harvard could be. As necessary, he could explain the intricacies of the Internal Revenue Code and
the administrative demands of the value-added tax. He was, after all,
a widely published and world-renowned scholar. International and
value-added taxation were his fields, and they were fields in which he
stood second to none.
But Ollie understood as well how necessary it could sometimes be
to identify the best route to the foliage in New England, or the top
market in Cambridge to buy fish. His interpersonal gifts were extraordinary, reports Harvard Professor Susan Pharr: “At a big Harvard
event, Ollie instinctively headed for the shiest foreign student in the
room. A dejected face was soon beaming as Ollie, in his low-key and
gentle way, engaged the student in animated conversation.”
If Stanley Surrey created the International Tax Program (ITP), it
was Ollie who brought it to life. He began directing ITP training in
1955, joined the Law School tenure track in 1959, became full professor in 1961, and continued to run the ITP until 1989. He took emeritus status in 1993, and continued to teach part-time thereafter.
It was at the ITP that the international students and scholars came
to know and love Ollie Oldman. In a typical year, he admitted some
fifteen to twenty-five students. He admitted them from a wide variety
of countries, but, at least in the last two decades, Taiwan, Sri Lanka,
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
∗
∗∗
Professor of Tax Law, Graduate School of Law & Politics, University of Tokyo.
Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies, Harvard University. We received helpful
advice and suggestions from William Alford, Robert Clark, and Susan Pharr.
2009]
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OLIVER OLDMAN
and Japan dominated the list (see Table 1). Some years he admitted
one student each from these countries, other years two. But from
these three countries he admitted at least one student nearly every
year.
TABLE 1. ITP STUDENTS, SCHOOL YEARS 1970–19891
Country
Taiwan
Sri Lanka
Japan
Pakistan
Mexico
Venezuela
Brazil
Colombia
Singapore
India
Spain
Bangladesh
Ghana
Tanzania
Ethiopia
Indonesia
Nigeria
Thailand
Trinidad
Korea
Philippines
Germany
Mauritius
Switzerland
School
Year
Ending
1
1 1
1
1 1 1 2 2 2
1 2 2 1 2 2 2
2 1 1 1 1 1 1
1 2 1
2
1
1 3 2
1 1
2 2 1
2
2 2 2 3
1 1
1 1 2 3
1 2
1
2
1 1
1
1
1
1 2 2 2
1
1
1
1
1 1
1
1
1 1
1
1 1
1
1
1
1
1
1 1
1 1
1 1
1
3 3
2 1
1 2
2 2
1
1
1 1
1
1
2
1 1
1 1
1
1 1
2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1
1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
2 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2
1 3 2 1 2 1 2 2
2 1 1 2 2 3
1 1
2
2 1 1
1
1
1
1 1 1
1
1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1
2 3
1
1
1
2 1
1
2 1 3 1
3
1
2
1 1
2
1
1
1
1
2 2 2
1
1
1 1
1
1 1 1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
2 3
1
2 2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1 1
1
1 1
1 1
33
30
29
25
24
17
14
13
13
12
12
11
11
10
8
8
8
7
7
6
6
4
4
4
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
Total
At the ITP, Ollie and his staff (as a law student, in 1981, one of us,
Ramseyer, helped teach one of the program’s introductory courses)
taught students the technology of tax. They (and the other Harvard
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
1 In addition to the countries mentioned in this table, 7 countries sent 3 students to ITP during this time, 14 sent 2, and 25 sent 1.
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faculty; ITP students sat for general law school classes too) taught the
law and procedure, of course. But the ITP also instilled in students
the more basic components of an efficient and clean tax bureau.
Always the mentor, Ollie enthusiastically invited young foreign tax
professors as visiting scholars — sometimes to the ITP, sometimes to
the East Asian Legal Studies Program. In the early 1960s, he hosted
the young Professor Hiroshi Kaneko. A brilliant scholar, Professor
Kaneko would go on to transform tax law scholarship in Japan. Later,
Ollie would invite not only Nakazato, but Professors Tadatsune Mizuno of Hitotsubashi University, Hideaki Sato of Kobe University, Yoshihiro Masui of the University of Tokyo, and Masahiro Shibuya of
Tohoku University. These scholars came to Harvard, studied, and returned to Japan not just with an understanding of the infrastructure of
tax, but also with an appreciation of what American research universities are all about and a deep and abiding sense of membership in the
intellectual community Ollie created and fostered.
His was a gift not lost on the recipients. Because of Ollie, the most
talented men and women in the Japanese Ministry of Finance had
studied at least a year at Harvard. By the time Ollie neared retirement, they had risen to the top of the Ministry. In return for what he
had provided, they ensured that the government awarded him the Order of the Rising Sun — the Japanese equivalent of knighthood.
When Professor Robert Clark visited Japan as dean in the 1990s, he
was bowled over by the number of HLS alumni who showed up.
“They didn’t turn out to meet me,” recalls Clark. “They turned out to
meet Ollie. Bureaucrats, lawyers, academics — they all turned out.
He was an amazingly kind man. And just by being the person that he
was, he had generated a huge following.”
In tributes to teachers as beloved as Ollie, it is easy to invoke
Robert Donat’s Mr. Chips. Like Chips, Ollie welcomed back his former students every year. When our children were young, he invited us
to his cottage in New Hampshire. He pushed them on the swings,
played with them in the lake, and gave them rides on his speed boat.
But unlike Chips, Ollie also went out to his students. Every year,
he and Barbara traveled the world to maintain and foster the ties they
had created with men and women who became leading judges, lawyers, officials, and scholars around the globe. He tracked their careers,
commiserated over their setbacks, and reveled in their victories. He
lectured at their universities and consulted with their governments.
He joined them at the hot springs and skied with them on the slopes.
He brought a quick wit, but he offered always a warm and compassionate soul.
2009]
OLIVER OLDMAN
1299
Richard Pomp∗
Most academics are delighted to make incremental contributions to
established fields of learning. We stand on the shoulders of those who
have come before us. Rare is the person who creates an entirely new
field of study. Rarer is someone like Ollie who created two new disciplines out of whole cloth — state and local taxation, and taxation and
economic development and administration — and wrote the books for
each.
When Ollie taught the first state and local tax course in the 1960s,
that field was viewed as a stepchild to federal tax. He was the first
academic to understand and anticipate the importance the subject
would come to play. He taught the course at a time when state taxation was mistakenly viewed by tax professors as a backwater to federal
tax courses. He knew what other academics would eventually come to
appreciate: that state and local tax issues present all of the intellectual
challenges inherent in the study of the federal system, with the additional challenge of a constitutional dimension. Further, whereas many
of the weaknesses in the federal tax system were well documented, intensely analyzed, and the subject of lively scholarly debate, state tax
issues were, by comparison, an unexplored virgin territory. Ollie introduced and inspired generations of students and academics to the
field as evidenced by more than eighty law schools now teaching that
course.
Ollie was the country’s leading theorist on the property tax, imbuing what had been a pedestrian field with intellectual rigor. And decades before most Americans had even heard of the value-added tax,
Ollie was teaching it as part of his courses. He created an intellectual
framework for thinking about the state tax field, coauthored a leading
casebook on state tax, now in its fifth edition, which has been used in
more than sixty schools, and coauthored the leading book on the
value-added tax.
Long before terms like “globalization” or “flat earth” entered our
lexicon, Ollie directed the International Tax Program (ITP) and created courses on taxation and economic development, and tax administration. His vision and experiences informed every aspect of the ITP,
which became world-famous. For nearly forty years, third world tax
officials associated Harvard with the ITP, rather than vice versa.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
∗
Alva P. Loiselle Professor of Law, University of Connecticut Law School.
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Starting with the second half of the twentieth century, there was
hardly a developing country that did not have ties with the ITP.
Among the alumni were ministers of finance, commissioners of taxation, judges, academics, and key officials in the IMF, the World Bank,
and the United Nations.
Ollie was the International Tax Program. He shaped and molded it
with an uncanny ability to be the first to do what years later everyone
acknowledged needed doing. His and Barbara’s personal warmth,
support, and nurturing of often overwhelmed foreign students (most
venturing outside their countries for the first time), his professional
prescience and extensive network of foreign academics and former
students, could not be duplicated elsewhere — and no other institution
tried until the Law School allowed the ITP to fade away.
No one was a deeper depository of expertise and experience or a
font of profound wisdom. His creative mind, technical as well as policy prowess, and appreciation for the limited administrative resources
in the developing world spread him thin as everyone wanted a piece of
Ollie. Luckily, he and Barbara were intrepid travelers. Many a foreign country should be indebted to Barbara for her encouragement
and support, for without her there would have been less of Ollie to go
around. And if Ollie could not leave Cambridge, legions of commissioners and ministers would make the pilgrimage to sit at the feet of
“the man.”
Ollie was always ahead of the curve. At a time when academic
kudos revolved around policy analysis, he knew that good tax policy
and bad tax policy could look very much the same if implemented
through shoddy tax administration. That understanding was shared
among a senior generation of icons like Dick Musgrave, Carl Shoup,
Richard Bird, and Bill Vickrey, but is less appreciated today. The issues of tax administration were a centerpiece of the International Tax
Program. With his typical acumen and insights, Ollie breathed life
into what could have been a dry and ignored topic. He knew that issues of tax administration did not rank high in the pantheon of academic topics but as was typical, he did not care. Administration was
the precondition to a meaningful tax system and that made it worthy
of serious intellectual study.
Others in this issue of the Review chronicle with wit and grace
Ollie’s life, achievements, awards, and honors. I would like to focus
more on my own personal remembrances.
***
Ollie interviewed me in 1970 as a second-year student to teach a
survey course on federal income tax to participants in the International
Tax Program. The job paid well, and my financial aid package did
not. My interest was more mercenary than intellectual. Nonetheless,
Ollie hired me, certainly not because of any interest I could feign in
the Program or in third world countries.
2009]
OLIVER OLDMAN
1301
After graduation I spent a year abroad, and then Ollie asked me
back to teach in the Program. This was heady stuff for anyone having
academic pretensions. I joined a group of luminaries, not the least of
whom was a young Mike McIntyre (who along with Ollie became a
dear and cherished friend, coauthor, and a major force on my
thinking).
Once hired at the Program, I thought it would be good form to
take a course with Ollie on third world taxation. In the classroom,
Ollie was the anti-Kingsfield. He had no interest in intimidation,
showmanship, or self-aggrandizement. He relished respectful intellectual debate; you were expected to have struggled with the reading, and
he was at his best when answering questions. His subtle and curious
mind saw relationships and connections in even the most quotidian of
questions. As students of Ollie’s, we came away from our exchanges
with an exaggerated belief in the suppleness of our minds; our insouciance led us to assume we stumbled upon so many worthy, albeit seemingly disparate links. (The exam would, of course, show otherwise.)
His gentle questioning stretched us and pushed us. Ollie was sincerely
kind, supportive, and affirming, long before it was fashionable to
worry (especially in an era of Kingsfields) about a student’s
self-esteem.
Classroom discussions drew on Ollie’s vast experiences and pragmatic judgment. But unlike many, he sanitized his discussions to strip
himself out of the presentation. While typical of his self-effacing personality, this had the salutary effect of encouraging debate, without
any student feeling intimidated from challenging decisions or strategies
that Ollie had personally made. Ollie taught us the art of the second
best and how the perfect was the enemy of the good. We absorbed the
various tradeoffs that mark a tax system and came to understand the
arrogance of criticizing from afar, without being privy to all of the indigenous constraints. We came to appreciate that designing and implementing a tax system called as much for creativity and imagination
as it did for technical acuity.
His course on taxation and economic development, unique in the
country at that time, was attended by ministers of finance, commissioners of taxation, and tax administrators from the developing world.
For many law students, including me, rubbing elbows with these dignitaries from abroad broadened us in the classical sense of higher education — and instilled in some of us a higher calling.
As I later came to travel throughout the third world, I could count
on two things. First, having been associated with Ollie would grant
me immediate access at tax departments and ministries of finance,
along with coveted invitations to private dinners and participation in
policy sessions. His former students would pepper me with questions
about how Ollie was doing; they were sincere, caring, and appreciative
of all he had done for them, both personally and professionally. Sec-
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ond, while foreign bookshelves might be thin and sparse by U.S. standards, where we are inundated by the publishers, Ollie’s books on development would always hold a position of prominence — and be
well-worn.
I logged a lot of miles with Ollie, especially in Africa and Asia. It
was a good thing that he relished exotic foods. This was a valuable
talent indeed, given his place of honor at foreign banquets. As the exalted guest, he would usually be given the choicest parts of fish or
fowl; the scarcer or more exotic the part, the more treasured it would
be and thus destined for Ollie. Never one to embarrass his hosts, he
would, with either feigned or real gusto, show the proper relish as he
downed fish eyes, duck tongues, scorpion stingers, cicada, seahorses,
and fried locusts. He mastered the fine art of eating just enough at
these banquets to be respectful, but not enough to earn seconds. Nor
was he ever one to turn down tempting street food. With a quick
smell and visual scan, he banished concerns of salmonella and
botulism.
You never know someone until you travel with them under hardship conditions. The lack of sleep, hygiene, and nutrition reveals a
person’s character. Ollie was unflappable and indefatigable. Once in
1979, when a fruit basket that had been provided to us by a so-called
“hotel” in China showed signs of being enjoyed by something with a
frighteningly wide span of teeth, Ollie did not make a fuss or ask to
change rooms. He simply took a slat that was supporting the mattress
under the bed, used the fruit as bait, shut off the lights, and waited.
We did not have to wait long until he dispatched the interloper. This
act was motivated more by not wanting to embarrass the hotel than by
any innate aggression. No one was sweeter than Ollie, and I assume
he used no more force than was necessary.
This same self-sufficiency was captured in his retort when, on a
long trip across the Sahara by Land Rover, someone complained about
the lack of facilities. With his inimitable quiet understatement he
noted that, “The whole world’s your bathroom.” It was hard to be a
complainer or whiner when you traveled with Ollie, no matter how
primitive or challenging the circumstances.
Ollie never did what was fashionable; to the contrary, things became fashionable because Ollie did them. And he was doing them
long before others realized they needed to be done. No one of his generation has had more of an influence on tax systems around the world.
His spirit and wisdom live on in those whom he mentored, taught, advised, and counseled. And a selfless and sweet soul like Ollie would be
pleased by that — although unlikely to have ever thought in those
terms.
2009]
OLIVER OLDMAN
1303
Eric M. Zolt∗
“He’s a good man.” From Oliver Oldman, the Learned Hand Professor of Law, Emeritus, these words were high praise. I would return
from working in Africa, Asia, Europe, or Latin America, and mention
to Ollie that I came across a former student who had graduated from
the International Tax Program (ITP) and had asked that I send regards to Ollie. Ollie would pause for a few seconds, and then often,
but not always, remark that the individual was a good man or woman.
In more than fifty years at the Law School, Ollie saw many changes,
but he was constant: he wanted to bring good people to the Law
School and help them leave better equipped to meet the challenges and
opportunities that they would face in their home countries.
In her leadership of Harvard Law School, Dean Elena Kagan has
set forth her view of the major attributes of a great law school in the
twenty-first century. Among these are, first, a global perspective and a
global context. A law school should give its students exposure to ideas
and practices outside the United States, and even beyond the Englishspeaking countries.1 Second, the law school should use interdisciplinary approaches to address issues and problems. A law school should
combine legal training with other academic disciplines to provide students the tools necessary to succeed in a complex world.2 Third, a law
school should have an emphasis on public service.3 A law school
should make society better, not just its graduates wealthier.
I suspect that Ollie believed that Dean Kagan got it exactly right.
After all, perhaps more than any program or group at the Law School,
the ITP had been doing those things for over fifty years. Through the
leadership, dedication, and wisdom Ollie brought to the ITP (continuing the work of its founding director, Stanley Surrey (1952–64) and
carried on very ably by Ollie’s successor, Glenn Jenkins (1989–98)), the
ITP provided interdisciplinary graduate-level training to over 1000
government officials from over 100 countries. A review of the alumni
directory of the ITP highlights the many successes of the program.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
∗ Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law. From July 2000 to June 2003, Professor Zolt
served as the Director of the International Tax Program at Harvard Law School.
1 See Elena Kagan, Dean, Harvard Law School, John W. King Memorial Lecture at the New
Hampshire Supreme Court 3 (Oct. 6, 2008), available at http://www.courts.state.nh.us/press/
Kagan_NH_speech_distribution.pdf.
2 Id.
3 Id. at 8–9.
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Graduates have assumed high-ranking government and private sector
positions in their home countries. Several graduates have served in
important positions in the International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank. With Ollie’s encouragement, these individuals have made, and
still are making, substantial contributions to the growth and development of their countries.
Being admitted into Harvard Law School changes your life (or so
development officers would like you to believe). For J.D. students,
winning the admissions lottery provides unrivaled opportunities for
their professional careers and sometimes, given the rate of intermarriage, their personal lives. I wonder, though, whether a Harvard
J.D. really makes such a dramatic difference. After all, these are people who would otherwise have attended Yale, Chicago, Stanford, or
any of the other top schools, where similar professional (and, perhaps,
personal) opportunities are available.
By contrast, winning the admissions lottery for the ITP students
has changed the lives of many of its graduates. These students, who
came to Harvard from all over the world, suddenly had the chance to
participate in the best that American higher education could offer. A
substantial percentage of the ITP students were non-lawyers, and being admitted to study at the Law School was a unique opportunity.
And for those who had legal training, being in a program which required courses in the Kennedy School provided an education that
could not be matched anywhere else.
The ITP students treasured the opportunity to come to Harvard.
Many of these students realized that Ollie’s efforts made it possible for
them to come to the Law School and appreciated how much he assisted them during their time there. Ollie, his wife Barbara, and his
longtime administrator, Rita Gilligan, helped students make the often
difficult transition from their home countries to the very different
world of Harvard Law School and provided assistance in the challenges these students faced during their time as students and, often, for
many years after they graduated.
Ollie’s office and the Oldman home were filled with gifts received
from former students. Obligatory (and often perfunctory) gift-giving is
the norm in many countries. But in Ollie’s case, these gifts really were
true tokens of friendship, gratitude, and appreciation — sentiments
that I have heard from graduates around the world who remember
Ollie with enormous affection.
Ollie’s influence was not limited to training government officials.
Ollie also was an important figure in tax reform and tax scholarship
for over sixty years. He was a major part of the historic Shoup Commission to Venezuela (1958) and the Musgrave Commission to Colombia (1968). He directed tax missions to El Salvador (1963–64) and
Chile (1964–68) and served as an advisor on tax policy and tax administration to many other countries.
2009]
OLIVER OLDMAN
1305
His scholarship focused on issues quite different from the mainstream of U.S. tax academics. Ollie made valuable contributions in
the areas of state and local taxes (often with Richard Pomp, University
of Connecticut), the value-added tax (often with Alan Schenk, Wayne
State University), and tax reform and development (often with Richard
Bird, University of Toronto).
I am honored to write this essay as part of a tribute to Oliver Oldman. But my real tribute to Ollie took the form of carrying on his
mission. Ollie appreciated that while the ITP had succeeded in training government officials in Asia, Europe, and South America, its impact in Africa was quite limited. It was clear that a different model
was needed. And several times during his career, Ollie tried to establish a comparable tax program in Africa.
In 2001, the ITP and three universities in South Africa, with strong
support from then-Dean Robert C. Clark, succeeded in establishing the
Southern African Tax Institute, an independent institution dedicated to
training, research, and technical assistance in tax policy and tax administration in Africa.
Ollie was the obvious candidate to give the inaugural lecture in
Pretoria. Two things stuck out about Ollie’s participation. First, there
was the speech itself. Ollie could have simply spouted some Holmesian homilies about “taxes are what we pay for a civilized society,” or
the importance of a functioning tax system in the growth and development of countries. But instead, Ollie, then eighty-one years old,
used the opportunity to review the recent technological advances in tax
administration in Singapore and how some of these changes might apply in the African context. He was still firmly in the game.
The second thing was Ollie’s ability to engage the participants. I
was impressed but not surprised. Over those two days, Ollie asked
each participant about his or her country and its tax system, as well as
about their families, and where to eat, hike, and visit in their countries
should Ollie and Barbara have the opportunity to travel there.
The Southern African Tax Institute (now known as the African Tax
Institute to reflect its broader jurisdictional scope) has trained over 800
African tax officials from 24 different African countries.4 This year, it
will offer its first master’s degree program. Ollie would be proud.
It is hard for me to think of anyone who has made so much of a
difference in the lives of so many people. Ollie was a wonderful
teacher, advisor, and friend. He provided guidance, support, and assistance to others with no expectation of getting anything in return. One
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
4 See AFR. TAX INST., ANNUAL REPORT OF THE AFRICAN TAX INSTITUTE (2008) (on
file with the Harvard Law School Library).
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[Vol. 122:1285
measure of a man’s life is how much he helps others. By this metric,
Ollie succeeded more than anyone else I know.
He was a good man.